White nationalism

White nationalism is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which espouses the belief that white people are a race[1] and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity.[2][3][4] Its proponents identify with and are attached to the concept of a white nation.[5] White nationalists say they seek to ensure the survival of the white race, and the cultures of historically white states. They hold that white people should maintain their majority in majority-white countries, maintain their political and economic dominance, and that their cultures should be foremost.[4] Many white nationalists believe that miscegenation, multiculturalism, immigration of nonwhites and low birth rates among whites are threatening the white race,[6] and some believe these things are being promoted as part of an attempted white genocide.[6]

Analysts describe white nationalism as overlapping with white supremacism and white separatism.[7][4][6][8][9][10] White nationalism is sometimes described as a euphemism for, or subset of, white supremacism, and the two have been used interchangeably by journalists and analysts.[8][11] White separatism is the pursuit of a "white-only state"; supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to nonwhites and should dominate them,[6][8][9] taking ideas from social Darwinism and Nazism.[12] White nationalists generally avoid the term "supremacy" because it has negative connotations.[13][14]

Critics argue that the term "white nationalism" is simply a "rebranding" and ideas such as white pride exist solely to provide a sanitized public face for white supremacy, and that most white nationalist groups promote racial violence.[15]

Contents

History and usage

The first documented use of the term "white nationalist" was 1970, according to Merriam-Webster.[16] The term was originally used by white supremacists as a euphemism for white supremacy, with specific views being developed later.[17] According to Daryl Johnson, a former counterterrorism expert at the Department of Homeland Security, the term was used to appear more credible while also avoiding negative stereotypes about white supremacists.[11] Modern members of racist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan generally favor the term and avoid self-describing as white supremacist.[18]

Some sociologists have used white nationalism as an umbrella-term for a range of white supremacist groups and ideologies, while others regard these movements as distinct. Analysis suggests that two groups largely overlap in terms of membership, ideology, and goals.[19] Civil rights groups have described the two terms as functionally interchangeable. Ryan Lenz of the SPLC has said "there is really no difference",[20] and Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law has said "There is no defensible distinction that can be drawn between white supremacy, white nationalism or white separatism in society today."[7]

Views

White nationalists claim that culture is a product of race, and advocate for the self-preservation of white people.[21] White nationalists seek to ensure the survival of the white race, and the cultures of historically white nations. They hold that white people should maintain their majority in mainly-white countries, maintain their dominance of its political and economic life, and that their culture should be foremost.[4] Many white nationalists believe that miscegenation, multiculturalism, mass immigration of non-whites and low birth rates among whites are threatening the white race, and some argue that it amounts to white genocide.[6]

Political scientist Samuel P. Huntington described white nationalists as arguing that the demographic shift in the United States towards non-whites would bring a new culture that is intellectually and morally inferior.[21] White nationalists claim that this demographic shift brings affirmative action, immigrantghettos and declining educational standards.[22] Most American white nationalists say immigration should be restricted to people of European ancestry.[23][24][25]

Regional movements

Australia

The White Australia policy was semi-official government policy in Australia until the mid twentieth century. It restricted non-white immigration to Australia and gave preference to British migrants over all others.

The Barton Government, which won the first elections following Federation in 1901, was formed by the Protectionist Party with the support of the Australian Labor Party (ALP). The support of the Labor Party was contingent upon restricting non-white immigration, reflecting the attitudes of the Australian Workers' Union and other labor organizations at the time, upon whose support the Labor Party was founded. The first Parliament of Australia quickly moved to restrict immigration to maintain Australia's "British character", passing the Pacific Island Labourers Act and the Immigration Restriction Act before parliament rose for its first Christmas recess. The Immigration Restriction Act of 1901 limited immigration to Australia and required a person seeking entry to Australia to write out a passage of 50 words dictated to them in any European language, not necessarily English, at the discretion of an immigration officer. Barton argued in favour of the bill: "The doctrine of the equality of man was never intended to apply to the equality of the Englishman and the Chinaman."[31] The passage chosen for the test could often be very difficult, so that even if the test was given in English, a person was likely to fail. The test enabled immigration officials to exclude individuals on the basis of race without explicitly saying so. Although the test could theoretically be given to any person arriving in Australia, in practice it was given selectively on the basis of race. This test was later abolished in 1958.

Australian Prime Minister Stanley Bruce supported the White Australia policy, and made it an issue in his campaign for the 1925 Australian Federal election.[32]

It is necessary that we should determine what are the ideals towards which every Australian would desire to strive. I think those ideals might well be stated as being to secure our national safety, and to ensure the maintenance of our White Australia Policy to continue as an integral portion of the British Empire.[32] We intend to keep this country white and not allow its peoples to be faced with the problems that at present are practically insoluble in many parts of the world.[33]

At the beginning of World War II, Prime Minister John Curtin (ALP) expressed support for White Australia policy: "This country shall remain forever the home of the descendants of those people who came here in peace in order to establish in the South Seas an outpost of the British race."[34]

Another (ALP) Leader of the Labor Party from 1960 to 1967 Arthur Calwell supported the White European Australia policy. This is reflected by Calwell's comments in his 1972 memoirs, Be Just and Fear Not, in which he made it clear that he maintained his view that non-European people should not be allowed to settle in Australia. He wrote:

I am proud of my white skin, just as a Chinese is proud of his yellow skin, a Japanese of his brown skin, and the Indians of their various hues from black to coffee-coloured. Anybody who is not proud of his race is not a man at all. And any man who tries to stigmatize the Australian community as racist because they want to preserve this country for the white race is doing our nation great harm... I reject, in conscience, the idea that Australia should or ever can become a multi-racial society and survive.[35]

He was the last leader of either the Labour or Liberal party to support it.

The Canadian government also attempted to restrict immigration from British India by passing an order-in-council on January 8, 1908, that prohibited immigration of persons who "in the opinion of the Minister of the Interior" did not "come from the country of their birth or citizenship by a continuous journey and or through tickets purchased before leaving their country of their birth or nationality." In practice, this applied only to ships that began their voyages in India, because the great distance usually necessitated a stopover in either Japan or Hawaii. These regulations came at a time when Canada was accepting massive numbers of immigrants (over 400,000 in 1913 alone – a figure that remains unsurpassed to this day), almost all of whom came from Europe. This piece of legislation has been called the "continuous journey regulation".

Germany

The Thule Society developed out of the "Germanic Order" in 1918, and those who wanted to join the Order in 1917 had to sign a special "blood declaration of faith" concerning their lineage: "The signer hereby swears to the best of his knowledge and belief that no Jewish or coloured blood flows in either his or in his wife's veins, and that among their ancestors are no members of the coloured races."[38]Heinrich Himmler, one of the main perpetrators of the Holocaust, said in a speech in 1937: "The next decades do in fact not mean some struggle of foreign politics which Germany can overcome or not ... but a question of to be or not to be for the white race ... ."[39] As the Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg said on the 29th of May 1938 on the Steckelburg in Schlüchtern: "It is however certain that all of us share the fate of Europe, and that we shall regard this common fate as an obligation, because in the end the very existence of White people depends on the unity of the European continent."[40]

At the same time Nazis subdivided white people into groups, viewing the Nordics as the "master race" (Herrenvolk) above groups like Alpine and Mediterranean peoples.[41] Slavic peoples, such as Russians and Poles, were considered Untermenschen instead of Aryan.[42]Hitler's conception of the Aryan Herrenvolk ("Aryan master race") explicitly excluded the vast majority of Slavs, regarding the Slavs as having dangerous Jewish and Asiatic influences.[43] The Nazis because of this declared Slavs to be untermenschen (subhumans).[44][45] Hitler described Slavs as "a mass of born slaves who feel the need of a master".[46] Hitler declared that because Slavs were subhumans that the Geneva Conventions were not applicable to them, and German soldiers in World War II were thus permitted to ignore the Geneva Conventions in regard to Slavs.[47] Hitler called Slavs "a rabbit family" meaning they were intrinsically idle and disorganized.[48] Nazi Germany's propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels had media speak of Slavs as primitive animals who were from the Siberian tundra who were like a "dark wave of filth".[48][49] The Nazi notion of Slavs being inferior was part of the agenda for creating Lebensraum ("living space") for Germans and other Germanic people in eastern Europe that was initiated during World War II under Generalplan Ost, millions of Germans and other Germanic settlers would be moved into conquered territories of Eastern Europe, while the original Slavic inhabitants were to be exterminated and enslaved.[50] Nazi Germany's ally the Independent State of Croatia rejected the common conception that Croats were primarily a Slavic people and claimed that Croats were primarily the descendents of the Germanic Goths.[51] However the Nazi regime continued to classify Croats as "subhuman" in spite of the alliance.[52] Even among European cultures and people that were considered Aryan, the Nazis considered the Nordic race and German culture to be superior to other Aryan races and cultures, thus making them far less Pan-European than groups that identify themselves as White Nationalist.

New Zealand

Following the example of anti-Chinese poll taxes enacted by California in 1852 and by Australian states in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s, John Hall's government passed the Chinese Immigration Act 1881. This imposed a £10 tax per Chinese person entering New Zealand, and permitted only one Chinese immigrant for every 10 tons of cargo. Richard Seddon's government increased the tax to £100 per head in 1896, and tightened the other restriction to only one Chinese immigrant for every 200 tons of cargo.

The Immigration Restriction Act of 1899 prohibited the entry of immigrants who were not of British or Irish parentage and who were unable to fill out an application form in "any European language."[53] The Immigration Restriction Amendment Act of 1920 aimed to further limit Asian immigration into New Zealand by requiring all potential immigrants not of British or Irish parentage to apply in writing for a permit to enter the country. The Minister of Customs had the discretion to determine whether any applicant was "suitable." Prime Minister William Massey asserted that the act was "the result of a deep seated sentiment on the part of a huge majority of the people of this country that this Dominion shall be what is often called a 'white' New Zealand."[54]

One case of a well known opponent of non-British and non-European immigration to New Zealand is that of English-born Lionel Terry who, after traveling widely to South Africa, British Columbia and finally New Zealand and publishing a book highly critical of capitalism and Asian immigration, shot and killed an elderly Chinese immigrant in Wellington. Terry was convicted of murder in 1905 and sentenced to death, but the sentence was commuted to life incarceration in New Zealand psychiatric institutions.

A Department of External Affairs memorandum in 1953 stated: "Our immigration is based firmly on the principle that we are and intend to remain a country of European development. It is inevitably discriminatory against Asians – indeed against all persons who are not wholly of European race and colour. Whereas we have done much to encourage immigration from Europe, we do everything to discourage it from Asia."[55]

Paraguay

In Paraguay, the New Australian Movement founded New Australia, a utopian socialist settlement in 1893. Its founder, William Lane, intended the settlement to be based on a "common-hold" instead of a commonwealth, life marriage, teetotalism, communism and a brotherhood of Anglophone white people and the preservation of the "colour-line". The colony was officially founded as Colonia Nueva Australia and comprised 238 adults and children.[56]

In July 1893, the first ship left Sydney, Australia for Paraguay, where the government was keen to get white settlers, and had offered the group a large area of good land. The settlement had been described as a refuge for misfits, failures and malcontents of the left wing of Australian democracy.[57] Notable Australian individuals who joined the colony included Mary Gilmore, Rose Summerfield and Gilbert Stephen Casey. Summerfield was the mother of León Cadogan, a noted Paraguayan ethnologist.

Due to poor management and a conflict over the prohibition of alcohol, the government of Paraguay eventually dissolved New Australia as a cooperative. Some colonists founded communes elsewhere in Paraguay but others returned to Australia or moved to England. Around 2,000 descendants of the New Australia colonists still live in Paraguay.[58][59]

South Africa

In South Africa, white nationalism was championed by the National Party starting in 1948, as opposition to apartheid heated up.[60][61] The Promotion of Bantu Self-Government Act, 1959 established homelands (sometimes pejoratively referred to as Bantustans) for ten different black African tribes. The ultimate goal of the National Party was to move all Black South Africans into one of these homelands (although they might continue to work in South Africa as "guest workers"), leaving what was left of South Africa (about 87 percent of the land area) with what would then be a White majority, at least on paper. As the homelands were seen by the apartheid government as embryonic independent nations, all Black South Africans were registered as citizens of the homelands, not of the nation as a whole, and were expected to exercise their political rights only in the homelands. Accordingly, the three token parliamentary seats that had been reserved for White representatives of black South Africans in Cape Province were scrapped. The other three provinces – Transvaal, the Orange Free State, and Natal – had never allowed any Black representation.

Coloureds were removed from the Common Roll of Cape Province in 1953. Instead of voting for the same representatives as White South Africans, they could now only vote for four White representatives to speak for them. Later, in 1968, the Coloureds were disenfranchised altogether. In the place of the four parliamentary seats, a partially elected body was set up to advise the government in an amendment to the Separate Representation of Voters Act.

During the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, the government implemented a policy of "resettlement", to force people to move to their designated "group areas". Millions of people were forced to relocate during this period. These removals included people relocated due to slum clearance programs, labour tenants on White-owned farms, the inhabitants of the so-called "black spots", areas of Black owned land surrounded by White farms, the families of workers living in townships close to the homelands, and "surplus people" from urban areas, including thousands of people from the Western Cape (which was declared a "Coloured Labour Preference Area")[62] who were moved to the Transkei and Ciskei homelands. The best-publicised forced removals of the 1950s occurred in Johannesburg, when 60,000 people were moved to the new township of Soweto, an abbreviation for South Western Townships.[63][64]

Until 1955, Sophiatown had been one of the few urban areas where Blacks were allowed to own land, and was slowly developing into a multiracial slum. As industry in Johannesburg grew, Sophiatown became the home of a rapidly expanding black workforce, as it was convenient and close to town. It could also boast the only swimming pool for Black children in Johannesburg.[65] As one of the oldest black settlements in Johannesburg, Sophiatown held an almost symbolic importance for the 50,000 Blacks it contained, both in terms of its sheer vibrancy and its unique culture.[tone] Despite a vigorous ANC protest campaign and worldwide publicity, the removal of Sophiatown began on 9 February 1955 under the Western Areas Removal Scheme. In the early hours, heavily armed police entered Sophiatown to force residents out of their homes and load their belongings onto government trucks. The residents were taken to a large tract of land, thirteen miles (19 km) from the city center, known as Meadowlands (that the government had purchased in 1953). Meadowlands became part of a new planned Black city called Soweto. The Sophiatown slum was destroyed by bulldozers, and a new White suburb named Triomf (Triumph) was built in its place. This pattern of forced removal and destruction was to repeat itself over the next few years, and was not limited to people of African descent. Forced removals from areas like Cato Manor (Mkhumbane) in Durban, and District Six in Cape Town, where 55,000 coloured and Indian people were forced to move to new townships on the Cape Flats, were carried out under the Group Areas Act of 1950. Ultimately, nearly 600,000 coloured, Indian and Chinese people were moved in terms of the Group Areas Act. Some 40,000 White people were also forced to move when land was transferred from "White South Africa" into the Black homelands.[citation needed]

Before South Africa became a republic, politics among White South Africans was typified by the division between the chiefly Afrikaner pro-republic conservative and the largely English anti-republican liberal sentiments, with the legacy of the Boer War still a factor for some people.[66] Once republican status was attained, Hendrik Verwoerd called for improved relations and greater accord between those of British descent and the Afrikaners.[67] He claimed that the only difference now was between those who supported apartheid and those in opposition to it. The ethnic divide would no longer be between Afrikaans speakers and English speakers, but rather White and Black ethnicities. Most Afrikaners supported the notion of unanimity of White people to ensure their safety. White voters of British descent were divided. Many had opposed a republic, leading to a majority "no" vote in Natal.[68] Later, however, some of them recognized the perceived need for White unity, convinced by the growing trend of decolonization elsewhere in Africa, which left them apprehensive. Harold Macmillan's "Wind of Change" pronouncement left the British faction feeling that Britain had abandoned them.[69] The more conservative English-speakers gave support to Verwoerd; others were troubled by the severing of ties with Britain and remained loyal to the Crown.[70][71] They were acutely displeased at the choice between British and South African nationality. Although Verwoerd tried to bond these different blocs, the subsequent ballot illustrated only a minor swell of support, indicating that a great many English speakers remained apathetic and that Verwoerd had not succeeded in uniting the White population.[72]

United States

The Naturalization Act of 1790 (1 Stat.103) provided the first rules to be followed by the United States government in granting national citizenship. This law limited naturalization to immigrants who were "free white persons" of "good moral character." Major changes to this racial requirement for US citizenship did not occur until the years following the American Civil War. In 1868, the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was passed to grant citizenship to black people born in the US, but it specifically excluded untaxed Indians, because they were separate nations. However, citizenship for other non-whites born in the US was not settled until 1898 with United States v. Wong Kim Ark, 169 U.S. 649, which concluded with an important precedent in its interpretation of the Citizenship Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. This racial definition of American citizenship has had consequences for perceptions of American identity.[73]

During the controversy surrounding the All of Mexico Movement, Senator John C. Calhoun of South Carolina stated "We have never dreamt of incorporating into our Union any but the Caucasian race—the free white race... Ours, sir, is the Government of a white race."

Following the defeat of the Confederate States of America, the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) was founded as an insurgent group with the goal of maintaining the Southern racial system throughout the Reconstruction Era. The creation of this group was able to instill fear in African Americans while, in some cases, filling white Americans with pride in their race and reassurance in the fact that they will stay 'on top'. The message they gave to people around them was that, even though the Confederate States did not exist anymore, the same principle remained in their minds: whites were superior. Although the first incarnation of the KKK was focused on maintaining the Antebellum South, its second incarnation in the 1915-1940s period was much more oriented towards white nationalism and American nativism, with slogans such as "One Hundred Percent Americanism" and "America for Americans", in which "Americans" were understood to be white and Protestant. The 1915 film The Birth of a Nation is an example of an allegorical invocation of white nationalism during this time, and its positive portrayal of the first KKK is considered to be one of the factors which led to the emergence of the second KKK.[74]

The second KKK was founded in Atlanta, Georgia in 1915 and, starting in 1921, it adopted a modern business system of recruiting. The organization grew rapidly nationwide at a time of prosperity. Reflecting the social tensions of urban industrialization and vastly increased immigration, its membership grew most rapidly in cities and spread out of the South to the Midwest and West. The second KKK called for strict morality and better enforcement of prohibition. Its rhetoric promoted anti-Catholicism and nativism.[75] Some local groups took part in attacks on private houses and carried out other violent activities. The violent episodes were generally in the South.[76]

Ku Klux Klan members march down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. in 1928.

The second KKK was a formal fraternal organization, with a national and state structure. At its peak in the mid-1920s, the organization claimed to include about 15% of the nation's eligible population, approximately 4 to 5 million men. Internal divisions, criminal behavior by leaders, and external opposition brought about a collapse in membership, which had dropped to about 30,000 by 1930. It faded away in the 1940s.[77]

Starting in the 1960s, white nationalism grew in the US as the conservative movement developed in mainstream society.[78]Samuel P. Huntington argues that it developed as a reaction to a perceived decline in the essence of American identity as European, Anglo-Protestant and English-speaking.[79] The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 had opened entry to the US to immigrants other than traditional Northern European and Germanic groups, and as a result it would significantly, and unintentionally, alter the demographic mix in the US.[80]

In the United States a movement calling for white separatism emerged in the 1980s.[83]Leonard Zeskind has chronicled the movement in his book Blood and Politics, in which he argues that it has moved from the "margins to the mainstream".[84]

Relationships with black separatist groups

In February 1962 George Lincoln Rockwell, the leader of the American Nazi Party, spoke at a Nation of Islam (NOI) rally in Chicago, where he was applauded by Elijah Muhammad as he pronounced: "I am proud to stand here before black men. I believe Elijah Muhammed is the Adolf Hitler of the black man!"[90] Rockwell had attended, but did not speak at, an earlier NOI rally in Washington, D.C. in June 1961,[91] and once he even donated $20 to the NOI.[92] In 1965, after breaking with the Nation of Islam and denouncing its separatist doctrine, Malcolm X told his followers that the Nation of Islam under Elijah Muhammad had made secret agreements with the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan.[91]

Rockwell and other white supremacists (e.g. Willis Carto) also supported less well-known black separatist groups, such as Hassan Jeru-Ahmed's Blackman's Army of Liberation, in reference to which Rockwell told Los Angeles Times reporter Michael Drosnin in 1967 that if "Any Negro wants to go back to Africa, I'll carry him piggy-back."[93]

Criticism

Numerous individuals and organizations have argued that ideas such as white pride and white nationalism exist merely to provide a sanitized public face for white supremacy. Kofi Buenor Hadjor argues that black nationalism is a response to racial discrimination, while white nationalism is the expression of white supremacy.[95] Other critics have described white nationalism as a "...somewhat paranoid ideology" based upon the publication of pseudo-academic studies.[96]

Carol M. Swain argues that the unstated goal of white nationalism is to appeal to a larger audience, and that most white nationalist groups promote white separatism and racial violence.[97] Opponents accuse white nationalists of hatred, racial bigotry, and destructive identity politics.[98][99] White supremacist groups have a history of perpetrating hate crimes, particularly against people of Jewish or African descent.[100] Examples include the lynching of black people by the Ku Klux Klan (KKK).

^ abcd"White Nationalism, Explained". The New York Times. 21 November 2016. "White nationalism, he said, is the belief that national identity should be built around white ethnicity, and that white people should therefore maintain both a demographic majority and dominance of the nation’s culture and public life. [...] white nationalism is about maintaining political and economic dominance, not just a numerical majority or cultural hegemony".

^Despite new leaders, and with them new tactics and new ideas, the goal of white separatists remains to convince Americans that racial separation is the only way to survive. National Public Radio (August 14, 2003)

^Zeskind, Leonard (2009), "Prolegomena to the future, 2001–2004", in Zeskind, Leonard (ed.), Blood and politics: the history of the white nationalist movement from the margins to the mainstream, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, p. 526, ISBN9780374109035.